


Good Morning, Boise

by the_wordbutler



Category: The Avengers (2012)
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-08-18
Updated: 2012-08-18
Packaged: 2017-11-12 09:43:43
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,978
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/489488
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/the_wordbutler/pseuds/the_wordbutler
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Phil wakes up in Idaho, alive. Kind of.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Good Morning, Boise

            Phil wakes up in Idaho.

 

            _Good Morning Boise_ is playing on the tiny television in the room, one of those old ones with the built-in VCR.  He squints through the dust on the screen until he’s sure that it’s a real newscast, not something S.H.I.E.L.D. produced to use in undercover operations.

 

            No.  There really is _Good Morning Boise_ , and it really is on the TV.

 

            He presses the call button on the hospital bed and closes his eyes.

 

She snaps pink bubble gum between expensive-looking white teeth as she checks his chart.




 

            “I’m—alive?” he asks her, somewhere in the middle of her third snap.

 

            She stops chewing long enough to look at him.  “Yeah,” she says.   “You in pain?”

 

            “No,” Phil replies.

 

            “Hungry?”

 

            “Not really, no.”

 

            “Want me to change the channel?”  She cranes her head up toward the television.  “Think we can get PBS in this room.  Sometimes.”

 

            “No, thanks,” he says.  She nods, settles the chart back down at the end of the bed, and puts her hands on her hips.  Her jaw moves like a cow’s, chewing in slow circles.

 

            She cracks her gum.  “Doctor’ll be by soon,” she tells him.  “And the guy who brought you here, probably.”

 

            Phil lets his eyes drift shut again.  He’s exhausted.  Not the normal kind of exhaustion from after a mission, either.  This exhaustion is bone deep.  It’s taken root somewhere inside of him, and when he closes his eyes, he feels its fingers fan out under his skin. 

 

            Its center is somewhere in the middle of his chest.

 

            He wonders if this was how Stark felt when he was dying.

 

            “Do I wanna know?” he asks.  His voice sounds far away, and his tongue feels thick.

 

            The gum-snapping stops.  “Know what?”

 

            “How bad—”  He pulls in a breath, releases it, and tries again.  “How bad it was.”

 

            “No.”  The drifting feeling jerks away when she speaks, like he’s been shaken.  He tries to blink, but he can’t convince his eyelids to lift.  He listens to the door creak open instead.  “You probably don’t.”

 

 

==

 

 

“I didn’t know there was a S.H.I.E.L.D. office in Boise.  Sir.”

 

            Nick Fury snorts and turns back to the window.  He was arguing on the phone with someone when Phil woke up again, disappeared for most of _Boise News at Noon!_ and half of _The Ellen Show_ , and returned in front of the food cart.

 

            He’s still swigging the dregs from the coffee he’d declared Phil _too sick to handle_.  Phil suspects he could’ve run a marathon that morning, and Fury still would’ve drunk his coffee.

 

            “You didn’t know about one,” he says, shrugging, “‘cause there _wasn’t_ one.  At least, not ‘till you got your stupid ass stabbed by Loki and we had to hide you somewhere.”  He shakes his head and throws back the last swallow of coffee.  Phil watches the balled-up paper cup land cleanly in the wastebasket.  “Dumbest decision I’ve ever seen, you running off like you thought you were Stark and me—”

 

            “But it worked,” Phil interrupts.

 

            Fury turns around, and their eyes meet.  Once, Stark’d gone on a drunken half-hour ramble about how hard it was to _look_ at Fury.  _He’s only got the one eye, you know_ , he’d slurred, draped along a couch that’d cost more than Phil’s first house.  _How’re you supposed to meet one eye?  ‘Cause if you have two, and he has one, one gets left out, and then you go all cross-eyed._   Stark’d shook his head.  _Doesn’t work.  Nope._

He’d thrown up before Phil could explain that he’d never had a problem.

 

            “They needed the push,” he continues.  “You’re the one who said it.  They needed a reason, and I gave them one.”

 

The staring contest breaks, then, and Fury’s gaze wanders.  Phil’s sitting up—bed raised, back cushioned by pillows—and his bandages are on display.  They’ve been changed once already.  He figures they’ll hit four or five changes by the time Fury goes back to whatever hotel is now S.H.I.E.L.D. Boise’s official barracks.

 

            Fury makes a sound in the depths of his throat and twists back to the window.  Phil can see the reflection of his frown in the glass.  “Just ‘cause it worked doesn’t mean I have to like it,” he says.

 

            “Of course not.”

 

            Seconds pass before, finally, Fury _sighs_.  “You know how big of a pain this is gonna be?” he demands, throwing up his hands.  “They bought it.  Hell, when Hill told me how bad you were those first couple nights, I didn’t know what _I_ believed, anymore.  They—”

 

            “They’ll understand,” Phil says.

 

            “No.  They won’t.”  Fury presses his lips together in a tight line, then releases.  “Not a one of them.  Not even—”

 

            “Don’t.”

 

            He hears the crack in his voice the second after Fury does, but even a second’s too late.  He drops his eyes to the tray of half-eaten lunch.  The crusts of a sandwich, half of bowl of mixed fruit in heavy syrup, and mayonnaise-sodden potato salad stare up at him.

 

            When the nurse brought it in, he’d been starving.

 

            Now, his stomach twists.

 

            “Agent?” Fury asks after Phil closes his eyes.

 

            “Not yet,” he says.  “Just . . . not yet.”

 

 

==

 

 

            “You, ah, you look pretty good.  For, you know, a dead guy.”

 

            Bruce Banner wears khakis and a linen button-down, sleeves over his hands as soon as the door closes behind him.  The muted television plays a soap opera that Phil was only half-watching when the nurse knocked.  The websites he’s been viewing—all news reports, all about the Avengers and the attack on New York—disappear when he closes the laptop Fury’d brought for him the night before.

 

            “Thanks,” he says.  He watches Banner’s face.  His eyes are soft, softer than anyone expects from the—  What was it Loki called him?  _The beast that makes play he’s still a man_?  They’re gentle.  When Fury looks at his bandages, Phil feels like he’s waiting for them to burst outward and spray the room with blood.

 

            Banner—looks like he wants to unwrap them, neatly, and see what’s left underneath.

 

            “Everybody . . .  ” Banner starts, but then he purses his lips.  He worries them together, rolls one between his teeth, and shakes his cuff against the back of his hand.  “We all thought you were . . .  Well, dead.”

 

            “I know.”

 

            “They had your—bloody cards, Fury said he was planning a funeral, I don’t—”

 

            “You said it yourself: you weren’t a team.”  Banner’s mouth snaps shut, but his eyes are wide.  Surprise, Phil realizes.  Surprise that Phil knew about the argument in the lab, that Phil’d known what was happening before the helicarrier was compromised.  “You needed something to unite you.  Something worth fighting for.”

 

            “The world’s pretty worth it,” Banner offers.  He’s toying with a button.  “I mean, I might not—spend a lot of time in it, at least not the way that everybody else does, but . . .  I think the world, it kinda qualified.  On its own.”

 

            Phil raises an eyebrow.  He knows one of his lips is twitching up with it, twisting into something that’s almost a smile.  “How well was that working out?  Before.”

 

            Banner looks away.  “It could’ve worked,” he says, finally.  “Without you having to—trick us.”

 

            “It could have,” Phil agrees, “but I don’t know if ‘could have’ is good enough.”

 

            In the end, Banner stays for the last half of the soap opera, one he’s seen bits of since he’s come back to the states.  He sits in the ugly, uncomfortable chair in the corner, back straight but his foot perpetually tapping.  When the show ends, he rubs his hands on his pants, thanks Phil, and heads toward the door.

 

            When he opens it, Phil asks, “How is he?”

 

            Banner pauses.  His wide fingers spread against the metal doorjamb before he shakes his head.  It’s hardly a shake.  It’s the kind of subtle motion you’d miss if you didn’t know what to look for.

 

            Phil’s always known what to look for.

 

            “He’s—been better,” Banner finally half-murmurs.

 

            Phil nods, and leaves it at that.

 

 

==

 

 

            “A _feint_?  We waged a battle that nearly killed us all and leveled a city for a—a _feint_?”

 

            When Thor whirls on his heel, Phil’s entire body tenses.  He’s on one of his mandated walks—three a day, every day, around the wing that’s empty except for him and his S.H.I.E.L.D. guards—and he’s not sure the IV stand will protect him against Thor’s rage.  Even without the extra armor and the cape, Thor’s still pretty intimidating.

 

            Especially since, right now, Phil’s in a hospital gown and paper slippers.

 

            Phil leans on the stand.  “It’s not—”

 

            “They _mourned_!” Thor roars, shoving an empty gurney against the wall.  “They—they mourned for your loss like family!  And I mourned with them!”

 

            When he shoves the gurney a second time, it tips over onto its side with an enormous metal clatter.  Phil twists, gritting his teeth, in time to see the guards behind them unholster their weapons.  “We’re good,” he says, holding up his free hand.

 

            The guards exchange glances.

 

            “Really,” Phil assures them, but he watches for several more seconds, just in case. 

 

            When he turns back around, Thor’s looming over him.  His jaw is set, hands clenched at his sides, and his chest is heaving.  And why not?  He’s lost a brother, Phil remembers.  Twice, if you counted Asgardian prison.  The last thing he needed was—

 

            “I’m sorry.”

 

            Thor nods curtly, just once, and then turns away.  Their footsteps echo down the empty hallway.  “You could not have chosen a different wound?” he asks, finally.  “One that did not require you pretend to be dead for weeks while your friends mourned your loss?”

 

            Phil’s lips twist, but only just.  “That,” he says, “is something to take up with your brother.”

 

 

==

 

 

            “Pepper _cried_.  Okay?  Pepper cried, and then I had to do the—the _crying thing_ , with the snot and the tissues and the back-patting.  And then I had to hold her all night, and into the morning, even when there were repairs to make to the Mark VII, and now it turns out that _you weren’t really dead_.”

 

            Tony talks over the local news, drowning out recaps from high school baseball games and a report on this year’s potato crop.  He paces around the room, back and forth, a manic lion waiting for feeding time.  Phil doesn’t stop him.  Phil watches him, watches the tension in his shoulders and the way his hands flutter around, but he doesn’t say a word.

 

            “I _get_ ,” he presses, hands in front of him like he’s trying to stop a freight train through force of will, “trying to—fix it.  Fix us, maybe, is the better word for it.  I get trying to fix us, ‘cause we were pretty broken, and, I mean, things would’ve gone a whole lot worse if we hadn’t worked it out.  But why not—team building?  You know?  Why not a ropes course, or one of those trust circles where Romanoff falls on Bruce, and then Bruce falls on Thor, and, I don’t know, Steve falls on Fury and we all—”

 

            “You, Tony Stark, would do a ropes course?” Phil asks.

 

            Tony pauses.  “Well, not— _me_ , strictly speaking.  I’m more the ideas guy.”

 

            “The ideas guy,” he repeats.

 

            “But I’d sign them up!  Maybe get them matching t-shirts.  And we could have the slumber party with ice cream and truth or dare at Stark Tower.  My treat.”

 

            Phil _looks_ at him.

 

            Tony holds his gaze for five seconds, sighs, and drops into the chair in the corner.  “She cried,” he points out.

 

            “I know.”

 

            He nods and lulls his head back against the scratchy upholstery, watching the ceiling.  The Boise weather report promises sun and breezes for the next five days, and Phil doesn’t reach for the remote.  He likes the drone of the TV, the background noise to their breathing.

 

            “Pepper’s not the only one,” Tony says in the middle of a commercial.

 

            Phil blinks.  “Only one—what?”

 

            “To miss you like a limb that got caught in a woodchipper.”  Tony twists, head still on the back of the chair, to meet Phil’s eyes.  “Sure, she lost her best gal-pal or whatever you two are—what _are_ you two, anyway?”

 

            “ _Tony_.”

 

            “Sorry, right.”  He shakes his head a little, and his eyes drift back up to the ceiling.  “I’m just saying,” he says, shrugging, “Pepper lost her gal-pal but some people lost a whole lot more than that.”

 

            Phil swallows.  “I know,” he says, again.

 

            “Do you?”  When he glances over, Tony’s big eyes are wandering over his face.  He’s the first person not to study the bandages, Phil realizes.  He’s the first not to come in and check to make sure all the pieces are still in the right place.  “I almost died once,” he presses.  “Remember?  I almost died, and I didn’t tell Pepper until _after_ I almost died, and _that_ almost killed _her_.  And that’s when nobody thought anybody else was even a _little_ dead.”

 

            “There wasn’t time to—”

 

            “No, no, see, I’m not criticizing.”  He holds up a hand.  “I’m not even harassing.  I’m just saying.  If my not-dying is enough to make Pepper feel like her heart’d been pulled out . . .  Well, I’m the engineering genius in the room, but I think you can do the rest of that math.”

 

            Phil nods, glancing back to the TV.  He can feel Tony’s eyes on his face.  “And if I told you I’ve already done that math?” he asks.

 

            “Then you’re halfway there.  Which isn’t all the way, but it’s _something_.”

 

 

==

 

 

            “You deserve a lot worse than that.”

 

            Phil holds his cheek with his hand and tries to ignore the fact that his ears are ringing from the force of the slap.  Natasha stands in front of him, hands on her hips.  Her fingers are digging into the fabric of her jeans, and he knows she wants to punch him.  Any other time, she probably _would_.

 

            But this is the first time he’s been outside since he woke up in Idaho, and he looks smaller and more broken than he _feels_ when he’s tucked into the wheelchair.

 

            He rotates his jaw.  It pops.  “Probably,” he tells her.

 

            “Probably?” she repeats, and then she launches into a litany of Russian curses that Phil can’t actually follow.  She throws up her hands, walks across the courtyard, and kicks a stone bench hard enough that the seat shifts.  For the first time, Phil’s grateful he’s been injured.  “You could’ve died!  You took on Loki alone, and you _almost died_!”

 

            “I had to.”

 

            “No, you didn’t.”

 

            “Yes.”  He meets and holds her eyes.  “I did.”

 

            They stare at each other across the courtyard.  Natasha kicks the bench again and then sinks down on it, elbows on her thighs.  She laces her fingers together between her knees, then decides to unfold her hands.  She watches them, not Phil.

 

            Phil probably deserves that, too.

 

            “It could’ve been someone else,” she says, finally.

 

            “No, it couldn’t,” he replies evenly.  She raises her head to look at him.  “Nobody would’ve cared if it was Fury.  You’re probably the only person who would’ve missed Hill.  It had to be someone all of them knew.”  She looks away again.  “It had to be someone who mattered.”

 

            She shakes her head.  Her curls move with the motion and then with the breeze.  It really is sunny in Boise.  “You can’t tell me you had an endgame.”

 

            He doesn’t try to.

 

            They sit in the sun for ten minutes, silent, the courtyard’s brick path between them.  A squirrel runs by, a few birds tussle in a shrub, and Phil’s eyes continually come back to Natasha.  She’s pressing her hands together, lacing and unlacing her fingers.  Even though she’s close enough to count the buttons on her jacket, she feels a hundred miles away.

 

            Finally, she says, “He needs to know.”

 

            Phil tugs in a breath, then lets it out again.  “I know,” he replies.  “We’re getting there.”

 

            “No.”  Her head rises.  The look she gives him sears through his chest, sharper than a hundred spears.  “He _needs_ to know.  He can’t—go on, not knowing.  He can’t—”

 

            “Soon.”  The single word is a promise.  It catches in Phil’s throat, but he keeps his voice steady.  “Just not yet.”

 

            Natasha shakes her head.  “Any waiting’s too much when you’ve gone through what we did,” she informs him.

 

            He snorts softly and looks away.  “You’re telling me.”

 

 

==

 

 

            “Tony, he—introduced me to eBay.  I don’t think I understand most of it, but I got the important part down.”

 

            Steve’s fingers are long and agile, more than you’d expect from a man who can outrun cars.  Phil reaches forward and takes the packet of cards from between them.  “Thank you,” he says, because he’s not sure what else to say.

 

            He’s in the common room of the wing with only one patient, in pajamas today because he’s been cleared to change out of the gown.  The television gets four different channels, but he’s put it on _Good Morning Boise_.  There’s something comforting about having a routine.  Steve shifts his weight from one foot to another, hands in his pockets.  Nervously, Phil thinks, turning one of the Captain America cards over in his fingers.

 

            “I know you—have your reasons,” he says after a few seconds, and Phil looks up at him.  Steve tosses his head enough to shake hair off his forehead.  “I’m not questioning what you did.  I think . . .  In war, sometimes, your whole playbook is turned upside down and you only have the one play.  You did what you had to do.”

 

            “But?” Phil asks. 

 

            “But now that you’re healthy—healthier,” Steve corrects, shrugging, “I think you need to come back.  Nobody’s gonna leave the team if you show up in your suit and everything’s back to normal.  Nobody’s gonna make a break for it.”

 

            “I know that,” he admits.

 

            “Then why?”  Steve’s hands jump out of his pockets long enough to gesture around the common room.  “You can’t—like it here.  I mean, I’ve been in some pretty strange places in the last couple months, and I’ve even liked some of them, but . . .  This is a little crazy.  Even for the guy who took on Loki alone.”

 

            Phil smiles.  “It’s not about that,” he promises, and looks at the cards again.  His were in better condition—a couple of these are pretty creased—but the thought . . .  He shakes his head, just for a half-second.  “There’s one more thing that has to happen before I waltz back into S.H.I.E.L.D. headquarters and start yelling at Stark for weaponizing kitty litter, or whatever he’s up to this week.”

 

            “He—never really did that, did he?”

 

            “Can you be sure?”

 

            There’s a beat before Steve laughs, as warm as it is short, but then his hands are back in his pockets.  He’s never done this before, Phil thinks.  He’s never seen one of his friends come out the other side.

 

            He wondered what it was like to wake up and find out everyone you’d ever loved lived their full lives while you were sleeping.

 

            “He’ll forgive you,” Steve says, finally.

 

            Phil tries to smile at the cards in his hand, but all he can do is shake his head.  “Not everyone,” he reminds Steve, “is as forgiving as you.”

 

 

==

 

 

            “You know, part of me just wants to finish what Loki started.”

 

            The hospital room is dark except for the glow from the television.  There’s an infomercial for an at-home rotisserie set, but Phil isn’t watching it.  He’s watching the shadow leaning against the door, the half-form of a man hidden by the darkness.

 

            He turns off the TV.  “How long’ve you known?” he asked.

 

            The shadow snorts, and its head shakes.  “Fury taking people on day trips?  Everybody comin’ back like they’d seen a ghost?  Gimme a little credit.”

 

            “But you waited.”

 

            “Like I said, part of me wants to finish what Loki started.  And I didn’t know how much I trusted the rest of me to stop that part.”

 

            The shadow pushes itself away from the door and moves, slowly, across the room.  The drapes are open, allowing in a few fingers of yellow-white light from outside.  The first time it touches Clint’s face, just a flicker before he moves again, Phil’s stomach seizes.  Days of stubble, almost a beard, cover his face.  There are dark circles under his bloodshot eyes.  His t-shirt looks like it’s been slept in for more than a single night.

 

            Phil pulls in a breath.  “How big is that part?” he asks.

 

            Clint’s head tips a half-inch to the side.  “You really wanna know?”

 

            “No.”

 

            Clint reaches the head of the bed and stops there.  Adjusting to the darkness means seeing a thousand things Phil would’ve missed with the television on: the shape of his jaw, the mess of hair he’s probably been putting fingers through, the fact that one half of the collar on his jacket’s popped up and the other half is lying flat.  He wants to reach up and fix it, but he isn’t sure now’s the time.

 

            Finally, Clint snorts softly.  “He could’ve at least come and picked up your pajamas,” he says, gesturing to the Wal-Mart brand flannel Phil’s wearing.

 

            “Doesn’t matter,” he says, watching Clint’s face.  “I come home tomorrow.”

 

            “Home?”

 

            “Home, or the closest hotel to home if home’s not an option.”  He hears his voice stumble, but he holds it as tight and even as he can.  “I’m prepared for that.”

 

            “No you’re not,” Clint returns.  Phil watches the line of his jaw soften and the corners of his mouth tip in.  His eyes slip down the length of Phil’s body, and then, he shakes his head.  “Dammit, Phil,” he murmurs.  “The _one_ time you go all _Mission: Impossible_ on me’s the time I’m not there to cover your back.”

 

            “There wasn’t time,” Phil says, softly.  “Even if you’d been there, I didn’t have time.”

 

            He shifts on the bed, just inches, and his fingers find the side of Clint’s leg.  They slide up the rough fabric of his jeans, battered and probably unwashed, and find his fingertips.  They’re rough, callused from years of endless practice with his bow.  Just feeling those calluses against his fingers makes his heart speed up.  But his heart’s alive, like the rest of him, and he can take it.

 

            Clint’s fingers shift against his.  “You didn’t have an endgame,” he says.

 

            Phil nearly laughs.  “Natasha told me the same thing.”

 

            “Good.”

 

            Seconds turn to minutes without either of them moving, Phil afraid to lose the warmth of those fingers.  Clint’s face flickers through emotions like a kid’s homemade flipbook: fear, hope, anger, relief, love, hatred, frustration, need.  Phil watches every one.  When the last hard line of tension releases from Clint’s jaw, Phil brushes his thumb against Clint’s.

 

            Their fingers lace together, and they only break apart after Clint’s slipped his shoes off and shoved himself onto the other side of the bed.  It’s only _just_ wide enough if Clint’s on his side.  But Clint’s there.  He’s warm, he smells of sweat, and he’s there.

 

            “You could’ve died,” he says after Phil closes his eyes, wrapped in Clint’s warmth.

 

            Phil pulls in one soft, steady breath.  “I thought I might,” he admits.

 

            “That’s supposed to make me feel better?”

 

            “No.”  He opens his eyes to meet Clint’s.  “It’s supposed to be the truth.”

 

 

==

 

 

            Phil wakes up to _Good Morning Boise_ playing, muted, on the dusty television, Clint asleep next to him, the room quiet and still except for his breathing.

 

            He exhales, once, and then closes his eyes again.

 

            Yeah.  He’s alive.

 

 


End file.
